Testing (in the context of software but also beyond), is and always has been a very important activity. However, even the most important of things can get overlooked or handled poorly; and unfortunately this is often the case with testing in practice – even more so given that the benefits of testing are often not immediately tangible, and that the financial savings that occur as a result of good testing are not immediately realized. Also testing without proper tooling, automation and process in place scales very poorly, and this can make testing seem more like an unnecessary chore as opposed to being fruitful. In this talk we overview the state of software testing in practice, comparing it and contrasting it to concepts taught in an academic setting, and discuss what can be done to test both effectively and efficiently. A brief list of topics covered is:

• – The Quality of Test Code
• – The Relationship between Test Code and Feature Code
• – Managing Tests and Understanding Metrics
• – The importance of Automation.

Vidroha Debroy is currently a Software Architect at Verizon Communications, having previously been a Senior Software Engineer at Hudson Alley Software, and a Software Development Engineer in Testing at Microsoft prior to that. He is also currently an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Southern Methodist University (SMU). Dr. Debroy graduated with his PhD in Software Engineering from the University of Texas at Dallas in 2011. His research interests include automated code refactoring, static analysis (especially in the context of JavaScript), test case prioritization, automated debugging and DevOps.